About 400 people were injured when a meteorite shot across the sky in
central Russia on Friday sending fireballs crashing to Earth, smashing
windows and setting off car alarms.

Residents on their way to work
in Chelyabinsk heard what sounded like an explosion, saw a bright light
and then felt a shockwave.

The meteorite raced across the horizon, leaving a long white trail in
its wake which could be seen as far as 200 kilometres away in
Yekaterinburg. Car alarms went off, windows shattered and mobile phones
worked only intermittently.
Chelyabinsk city authorities said about 400 people sought medical help, mainly for light injuries caused by flying glass.

“I
was driving to work, it was quite dark, but it suddenly became as
bright as if it was day,” said Viktor Prokofiev, 36, a resident of
Yekaterinburg in the Urals Mountains.

“I felt like I was blinded by headlights,” he said.

No
fatalities were reported but President Vladimir Putin, who was due to
host Finance Ministry officials from the Group of 20 nations in Moscow,
and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev were informed.

A local ministry
official said the meteor shower may have been connected with an
asteroid the size of an Olympic swimming pool that was due to pass Earth
at a distance of 27,520 kilometres but this could not be confirmed.
Windows were shattered on Chelyabinsk’s central Lenin Street and some of the frames of shop fronts buckled.

A
loud noise, resembling an explosion, rang out at around 9.20 a.m. local
time. The shockwave could be felt in apartment buildings in the
industrial city’s centre.

“I was standing at a bus stop, seeing
off my girlfriend,” said Andrei, a local resident who did not give his
second name. “Then there was a flash and I saw a trail of smoke across
the sky and felt a shockwave that smashed windows.”
A wall was damaged at the Chelyabinsk Zinc Plant but there was no environmental threat, a plant spokeswoman said.

Such
incidents are rare. A meteorite is thought to have devastated an area
of more than 2,000 square kilometres in Siberia in 1908, smashing
windows as far as 200 kilometres from the point of impact.

The
Emergencies Ministry described Friday’s events as a “meteor shower in
the form of fireballs” and said background radiation levels were normal.
It urged residents not to panic.

Chelyabinsk city authorities
urged people to stay indoors unless they needed to pick up their
children from schools and kindergartens. They said a blast had been
heard at an altitude of 10,000 metres, apparently signalling it occurred
when the meteorite entered Earth’s atmosphere.